Thursday, January 4, 2018

2017 In Review

Well, 2017 brought a lot of changes to our family. I thought I'd recap/reflect here as well as look at what 2018 will bring. Bear with me as I try to get my mom brain to think of things from a year ago.

Events
  • The first quarter of the year didn't bring a lot of changes, but at the beginning of May we made the HUGE step of purchasing our first home. It really has worked out so well for us mainly in that I have large kitchen I love (in spite of the grapevine wallpaper I haven't changed yet) and a fenced in backyard for our kids. For those of you who don't know, I'm not a decorator. I like nicely decorated houses, but I hate making decisions and even when a decision is made, I am often too lazy to put it into action. We're slowly getting things on the wall, but it's definitely a work in progress. Sorry there are no pictures for this one. I didn't actually take any before and after shots. 😞
  • Our family took a trip to Branson in June as part of the family retreat for the Collegiate and Young Leaders team of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention (which Lee's work at the BCM is a part of). We got to go have fun (well, Lee had to work sometimes) with the other BCM campus ministers' families and hang out as a family. We went to Silver Dollar City, swam in the hotel pool (Callie's favorite part I think), and I even worked up the courage to take all three kids to the Butterfly Palace by myself (not my best decision). While it wasn't a lot of fun trying to figure out how to get all the kids to sleep well in a hotel, even with adjoining rooms (spoiler alert: we didn't manage it), the trip provided for some crazy fun family memories.

  • There was a lot of summer fun for our family other than Branson as well. Lots of playing in the backyard and hanging out on a mostly empty campus. The older two also had their first swim lessons. The first lesson was a bit rough since Callie nearly drowned because she was being disobedient and Letty screamed the entire time, but by the end of the lessons they had each made huge progress (well, there was less screaming at least). Callie also had the chance to participate in her first team sport...t-ball. While she mostly enjoyed the snack after the games and spent more time playing in the dirt than even looking at the ball, she had fun and looks forward to next year. Although, we're thinking soccer may be a little more action packed for her.

  • Another big "change" for our family is that we adopted our oldest two that we had been fostering for a year and a half. I put change in quotes because day-to-day life didn't change, but of course now they're legally ours. We had a bunch of people pile into the courthouse. It was a bitter sweet day for sure. Our family grew on the same day another was permanently torn apart. We continue to pray for our girls' biological family and hope that one day they'll know the forgiveness and grace of the God Lee and I so desperately cling to. We also closed our home after the adoption and are now involved with The CALL as trainers. So we're not fostering at this time (although we might someday in the future), but God is still using us to fight the foster care crisis.

  • This year Lee and I celebrated our 8th anniversary and everyone turned another year older. The last few months of the year are part of the birthday marathon for us. We loved celebrating with friends and family, but with 4 birthdays, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and then Christmas in the mix as well we are all thankful for things to be back to normal. Well, Callie isn't. She still wishes it was Christmas.

Books
Last year I set a goal of reading one good non-fiction and one good fiction book each month. I usually read more than that, but I don't know if I'd always qualify them as "good." I didn't exactly reach my goal, but I read a lot more non-fiction than I normally do which was what I ultimately wanted. Here's a recap of some of the books I read.

Health and Fitness
I was really able to meet a lot of health and fitness goals this last year. I got down to about 20 pounds below my pre-pregnancy weight, I was exercising regularly, and feeding myself and my family more healthy meals. I struggled a bit with consistency at the end of the year, but I have some plans to take a step back and build lifelong healthy habits this year. 

So, this doesn't encompass everything that happened in 2017. We all know that life is made up of small moments everyday which make a large impact on our future selves. I've got some fun goals for 2018 which I'm excited about, but since this post is already long I will do a part 2 about looking forward to the new year. Stay tuned!

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